News

Apps: Pocket 4.5, TWC TV 3.2, Twitter #music + Yahoo Weather

One year ago, Read It Later became Pocket (free), the popular app from Idea Shower which saves content for offline reading. Now updated to version 4.5, the app introduces new sharing features, including Send to Friend, which lets you quickly share content with friends and family. An inbox will show content that’s been shared with you, along with any comments and highlighted quotes. The redesigned Share Menu provides shortcuts for sharing, and optional push notifications let users know when new content has arrived in their Pocket inbox.

Time Warner Cable’s free app, TWC TV (version 3.2.0), now lets Time Warner subscribers watch live TV channels while away from home. The update also lets viewers watch select On Demand programming from anywhere. Filtering and sorting shows and categories has also been improved.

Twitter, Inc’s anticipated Twitter #music app (free) — yes, the hashtag is part of the app’s name — is available for all after a recent soft launch. Twitter #music finds popular songs on Twitter and lets users listen to iTunes clips. Full songs can be heard by linking with Rdio or Spotify — users with Rdio or Spotify accounts will find Twitter #music much more useful. An iTunes link is also available for purchasing songs. The app features a nice graphical and gesture-rich UI, allowing users to swipe between pages from trending music on Twitter through to artists that they and their followers are listening to. A persistent button in the bottom right corner provides access to playback controls with a spinning-record-style artwork preview.

Yahoo’s brand new Yahoo Weather app (free) looks great — it uses Flickr photos for background wallpaper. Over top of that, users can immediately see the current forecast and the day’s highs and lows. A flick of the finger lets users scroll downward to see an hourly and five-day forecast, radar, precipitation predictions, wind and pressure readings, and other details, including the sun’s current position in the sky. Switching to landscape mode lets users view photos with just the city and current temperature tucked away in the corner.